Baruch, Bernard

Baruch, Bernard (1870–1965), venture capitalist, investor, government official.Born in Camden, South Carolina, and reared in New York City, Bernard Mannes Baruch graduated from the City College of New York in 1889. His first job on Wall Street, at the brokerage firm of A.A. Housman & Co., paid $3 a week, but he became a millionaire by the time he was thirty. He was a governor of the New York Stock Exchange, a leader in mining finance, and an occasional investor in properties controlled by the Guggenheim family. Although he did not sell out just before the stock market crash of 1929, as legend has it, he did salvage the bulk of his fortune.

Bernard Baruch's government service came in World War I and World War II. In March 1918, President Woodrow Wilson named him chairman of the War Industries Board. Granted sweeping powers, he effectively marshaled the U.S. economy for war. In 1919, he served in a senior capacity with the U.S. peace delegation at Versailles. During World War II he performed a variety of services, including the drafting of an influential report on rubber rationing. In 1946, President Harry S. Truman named the seventy‐five‐year‐old Baruch to present to the United Nations the U.S. plan for the international control of atomic energy drafted by Dean Acheson and David E. Lilienthal. Despite a dramatic opening speech by Baruch, the negotiations came to naught.

Six feet four inches tall, Baruch was a prototypical twentieth‐century celebrity, cultivating his press image as “adviser to presidents” and “park bench statesman.” In fact, the advice he eagerly offered a succession of presidents was only selectively accepted. His mastery of public relations is suggested by the fact that the New York Times devoted a paragraph‐length news story in 1947 to his sprained ankle.
See also Cold War; Depressions, Economic; Nuclear Arms Control Treaties; Nuclear Weapons; Stock Market; Versailles, Treaty of.

Bibliography

Jordan A. Schwartz , The Speculator: Bernard M. Baruch in Washington, 1917–65, 1981.
James Grant , Bernard M. Baruch: The Adventures of a Wall Street Legend, 1997.

James Grant